Share the Wealth
It is the duty of every man to endeavour that something may be added by his industry to the hereditary aggregate of knowledge and happiness. To add much can indeed be the lot of few,…
Tag: Samuel Johnson
Dr. Samuel Johnson
Harold: You sure have a way with people.Maude: Well, they’re my species!—Harold and Maude, 1971 film He was no philosopher of abstractions as were Berkeley, Descartes, Kant. He was a moral philosopher, perhaps, a moralist…
Talk Less, Act Better
A living example often can have a stronger effect than thousands of theoretical teachings and rules.–Chan Khong Example is more efficacious than precept.–Samuel Johnson
Is This How It Will Be?
Yet we to whom the shortness of life has given frequent occasions of contemplating mortality, can, without emotion, see generations of men pass away, and are at leisure to establish modes of sorrow, and adjust…
Avoid Being Scattered
But the fate of learned ambition is a proper subject for every scholar to consider; for who has not had occasion to regret the dissipation of great abilities in a boundless multiplicity of pursuits, to…
Be Reasonable
Open your heart to the influence of the light which, from time to time, breaks in upon you: when scruples importune you, which you in your lucid moments know to be vain, do not stand…
By Little and Little
One makes a better world by what Dostoevsky liked to call “microscopic actions.” When you walk down the street, Zossima tells the other monks, don’t scowl. A kindly look can shift a person’s mood and…
Take Charge
Mr. Elphinston talked of a new book that was much admired, and asked Dr. Johnson if he had read it. JOHNSON: “I have looked into it.” “What (said Elphinston) have you not read it through?” …
Blissful and Blithe
Yet we to whom the shortness of life has given frequent occasions of contemplating mortality, can, without emotion, see generations of men pass away, and are at leisure to establish modes of sorrow, and adjust…
Beware/Be Aware of Anger
The maxim which Periander of Corinth, one of the seven sages of Greece, left as a memorial of his knowledge and benevolence, was χολου κρατει, Be master of thy anger. He considered anger as the…